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Chico State's independent student newspaper

The Orion

Chico State's independent student newspaper

The Orion

Chico State's independent student newspaper

The Orion

Millennial understanding of technology should be celebrated, not slammed

babyboom - website
Illustration by Katherine Kurz Photo credit: Katherine Kurz

It seems that everything this generation does is inept in the eyes of older generations.

They have a preconceived notion that all we are is a poorly-mannered generation glued to our phones with no awareness of anyone but ourselves.

It is a hard idea to grasp that our generation has experienced a changing of the times; we have been stuck between the 1990s and the new age of technology.

In this changing world, we are actually being forced to learn to how to coexist with the constantly-evolving technology that has been created.

Children are being taught to be mindful of their social media presence, how to work Microsoft programs and that predators exist online.

Baby boomers only had to focus on surviving in one reality while these upcoming generations are being thrown into virtual and physical realms.

We were born in an age just between going to the library to research information and just opening Google to find an immediate answer. Often we are criticized for turning to the latter because it is seen as being lazy.

When people of older generations need help working a new form of technology, they immediately come to us because we are almost experts in figuring out these problems.

In today’s society, millennials are quick to react to anything that upsets them. They will post on Twitter, Tumblr or even Facebook with a passive aggressive message about what someone has done to make them angry; when they post it they do not even tag the person the post was about. We are quick to hide behind our screens in order to avoid these problems.

Generations before technology would go home and think about the situation at hand. They would be able to carefully dissect it and find the best way to deal with the problem. Most of the time, they would end up ignoring the problem altogether because that instant spark of anger would fizzle out with a good night’s sleep.

By solving these problems in this generation, we are able to stand up for what we believe is right. Not everyone will be able to react maturely, but there is a special group that is capable of doing so.

The need to have instant results is what creates a negative persona about every millennial in the country. Letting our anger push us makes us seem like self-absorbed monsters that will wreck anything that stands in the way of our success.

Often parents and grandparents only have negative comments about our behavior, but it seems they have forgotten that they were the ones who raised us.

Elizabeth Ernster can be reached at [email protected] or @Liz_Ernster on Twitter.

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